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Post by deuce on Feb 6, 2016 11:24:24 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on Sept 22, 2016 18:03:49 GMT -5
Thought I'd jumpstart this thread with this cool group pic from (I believe) Rafael Kayanan...
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Post by themirrorthief on Jan 4, 2017 23:02:03 GMT -5
Cormac Fitzgeoffrey is one of Howard's greatest creations IMO...its tragic that Howard didn't write more about him but there was that thing with the pulp markets back then I suppose
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Post by deuce on Jan 10, 2017 17:14:44 GMT -5
From a letter to Harold Preece, October 1930: I lately sold a tale to Oriental Stories in which I created the most somber character I have yet attempted. The story is called Hawks of Outremer, and I got $120 for it. The character is Cormac FitzGeoffrey: “Clean shaven and the various scars that showed on his dark, grim face lent his already formidable features a truly sinister aspect. His low, broad forehead was topped by black, square cut hair that contrasted strongly with his cold blue eyes. Son of a woman of the O’Briens and a renegade Norman knight, Geoffrey the Bastard, in whose veins, it is said, coursed the blood of William the Conqueror, Cormac had seldom known an hour’s peace or ease in all his thirty years of violent life. Hated by the Irish and despised by the Normans he had payed back contempt and ill treatment with savage hate and ruthless vengeance.” One of the main things I like about Farnsworth Wright’s magazines is you don’t have to make your heroes such utter saints. ~ REH ~
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Post by kullagain on Jan 13, 2017 10:49:06 GMT -5
Recently finished both the story and comic adaptation of "Hawks of Outremer." The Conan literary ancestry is abundantly transparent, and ripe in every fibre and cord of the story.
It's really interesting that Howard shows a more balanced view at both barbarism and civilization here, especially with the Sultan showing even more honour than Cormac does at the end.
The ending "moral" or "arc" did feel a little like a tacked on afterthought, for I didn't see too many allusions to it building up to that point, unless I missed bits about Cormac's doubts in the honour of other men, esp Turks.
I have a few thoughts about the comic I'll save for another time.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 18, 2017 1:06:16 GMT -5
An extract from 'Howard's Journey' by Howard Andrew Jones.
... the first of two finished tales of Cormac FitzGeoffrey. Titled “Hawks of Outremer,” it would eventually appear in Oriental Stories. Howard named FitzGeoffrey “the most somber character I have yet attempted” and sent him “into the East on a Crusade to escape his enemies.” In an October 1930 letter to Harold Preece, Howard wrote that he was considering writing a series based around the character. Howard did so, but it was short lived, consisting of only two completed tales and one unfinished draft of another, possibly because FitzGeoffrey was better in conception than in execution. Howard developed a complex background for his character, then frontloaded it into the first FitzGeoffrey story through direct narration and a long, forced conversation between FitzGeoffrey and an old friend, Sir Rupert. The depth of information is impressive, but the means of transmission is not; it is a contrived information dump.
The next chapter reveals FitzGeoffrey’s personality and mission through showing him in action, a marked improvement, but the tale lurches forward without ever really convincing the reader we should care about FitzGeoffrey or his adventure. In all it’s a weaker tale than “Red Blades.” A sequel story starts more strongly, but never really rises to great heights. Howard himself seemed to think he sold it merely on his reputation, “if I can be said to have one. The title, ‘The Blood of Bel-Shazzer,’ referring to a jewel, was the only interesting thing about it. The plot was hackneyed and sketchy, the action labored and artificial. Only once in the entire story did I evoke a slight spark of the fire that has smoldered out in me.” Howard frequently undervalued his writing and his intelligence when he discussed them in his letters, but his criticism this time is somewhat accurate. “The Blood of Belshazzar” is a murder mystery featuring a blizzard of characters who are introduced in passing as FitzGeoffrey surveys them in a feasting-hall. They are difficult to remember and harder to care about. FitzGeoffrey passively moves though the action, striving only to survive as he comes first upon the murdered victim and then the rogues responsible. The problems in the story look forward somewhat to one of the central issues of Howard’s “The God in the Bowl” in that the mystery itself just isn’t very compelling.
When FitzGeoffrey is saved at the end by a Mongolian borrowed from a Lamb story (one who calls FitzGeoffrey Bogatyr, a Russian term from Lamb’s Cossack stories unlikely to be used by a tenth-century Mongol) he rides off for further adventures, although after two stumbles it is hard to imagine too many people would be eager for another helping.
It is only with the third tale that we can finally glimpse what Howard must have been striving for with FitzGeoffrey in the first stories. It’s never seemed sporting to me to spend too much time criticizing the characters, prose, and plot elements of fragments and unpolished works – after all, they’re unfinished. They weren’t taken from the workshed for presentation because the writer didn’t think they were ready to share. What fragments can show us is the writer’s process and reveal the means that the writer employed in the act of creation. What we have of “The Slave Princess” would make any other writer shake his head a little in wonder. In first draft form it’s as polished as most finished pieces by other authors. There are occasional moments where an adjustment would have been called for – FitzGeoffrey’s retelling of his early battles goes on for far too long near the fragment’s conclusion – but it’s a rough draft, and an impressive one. It starts with a bang and flows smoothly from scene to scene. FitzGeoffrey may not be likable, but he fascinates, which is more than he did in the first two stories. He’s a shrewd schemer, a mighty warrior who has been shaped by his tumultuous past and genetics into more a force of nature than a normal human. In his physical description, with his volcanic blue eyes and square cut mane of black hair, he physically resembles Conan. His fighting prowess and cleverness look forward to the Cimmerian as well, although there the similarities end, for he lacks Conan’s humor, and it is hard to picture Conan so completely losing his cool that he launches into a berserk frenzy, as FitzGeoffrey does, nearly choking his host to death.
Judging from the surviving plot synopsis, Howard abandoned the story with only a few thousand words to go; most of the key scenes were composed, and he had to have known that the story was working. Writers have a sense about such things. It would have been a good story, had he completed it. But perhaps he abandoned a potentially good story because he had in mind one that would be great.
Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures, Del Rey, p.521-22
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Post by Deleted on Jan 19, 2017 16:10:08 GMT -5
I was drinking whiskey at my local pub yesterday morning, reading the Cormac FitzGeoffrey tales. I managed to read 'Hawks of Outremer' and 'The Blood of Belshazzar' and 'The Slave Princess' synopsis. I began to read the fragment as well, by now/then the drinks start getting to me - through the mists of my so-called mind, with every sentence all I could visualize was the Conanized SSOC adaptation by Roy, Buscema and Alcala. I must of read that comic over hundred times, it's a fantastic issue with fantastic art.
Anyway, I thought it best to stop reading for awhile and enjoy my Bells Whiskey. I also made sure the book made it back home - when I do forget books at my local pub they usually end up in the 'library' section of the pub. Years ago, I 'donated' my Sphere/Lancer paperbacks to the library, several books on the Huns, Mongols, REH, paperbacks with Frazetta covers that I just could not read, graphic novels, Norse Mythology etc. Sometimes the books last for months on the shelves, sometimes they're gone in a day!
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Post by deuce on Mar 24, 2017 18:30:16 GMT -5
There's a myth extant which says REH flat-out stated that CFG and Conan were the exact same height. Douglas Sunlin looks at that here: rehguide.wordpress.com/2010/12/22/conan-and-the-cormac-fitzgeoffrey-fallacy/I personally don't think that Conan was that much taller than CFG, but the fact remains that REH never made such an assertion in any of the sources we have. Somebody made that up. I will say that I've talked to people who should know and they agree that the likely source for this myth is "Big" JD Charles, something of a blowhard in REH circles and known for being loose with the facts.
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Post by deuce on Mar 31, 2017 10:25:43 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on Apr 28, 2017 11:35:45 GMT -5
“I have something each wishes. They hate each other; I play them against one another. I hold the key to the plot. They do not trust each other enough to move against me. I am Skol Abdhur! Men are puppets to dance on my strings. And women”—a vagrant and curious glint stole into his eyes—“women are food for the gods,” he said strangely.
-- The Blood of Belshazzar
Now check this out. Click in at 0:22. Is there some common source?
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Post by Deleted on Apr 28, 2017 14:55:36 GMT -5
“I have something each wishes. They hate each other; I play them against one another. I hold the key to the plot. They do not trust each other enough to move against me. I am Skol Abdhur! Men are puppets to dance on my strings. And women”—a vagrant and curious glint stole into his eyes—“women are food for the gods,” he said strangely.
-- The Blood of BelshazzarNow check this out. Click in at 0:22. Is there some common source? Great clip. Great performance from Yul. I think it may be from good ol' Shakespeare (ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA , Act 5, Scene 2). Thank Tengri and Crom for google, or I'd never have found this one I have to be honest, not read that much Shakespeare, I tried a long time ago, when I was a kid, but it didn't work out for me. Anyway, here's a possible source: CLEOPATRA Remember’st thou any that have died on ’t?
COUNTRYMAN Very many, men and women too. I heard of one of them no longer than yesterday—a very honest woman, but something given to lie, as a woman should not do but in the way of honesty—how she died of the biting of it, what pain she felt. Truly, she makes a very good report o’ th’ worm. But he that will believe all that they say shall never be saved by half that they do. But this is most falliable, the worm’s an odd worm.
CLEOPATRA Get thee hence, farewell.
COUNTRYMAN I wish you all joy of the worm. He sets down his basket
CLEOPATRA Farewell.
COUNTRYMAN You must think this, look you, that the worm will do his kind.
CLEOPATRA Ay, ay. Farewell.
COUNTRYMAN Look you, the worm is not to be trusted but in the keeping of wise people, for indeed there is no goodness in the worm.
CLEOPATRA Take thou no care. It shall be heeded.
COUNTRYMAN Very good. Give it nothing, I pray you, for it is not worth the feeding.
CLEOPATRA Will it eat me?
COUNTRYMAN You must not think I am so simple but I know the devil himself will not eat a woman. I know that a woman is a dish for the gods, if the devil dress her not. But, truly, these same whoreson devils do the gods great harm in their women, for in every ten that they make, the devils mar five.
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Post by themirrorthief on May 1, 2017 20:08:41 GMT -5
I wish Howard had somehow written biblical hero Samson into a Fitzgeoffrey tale...even if he was a ghost...
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Post by deuce on May 1, 2017 20:41:13 GMT -5
“I have something each wishes. They hate each other; I play them against one another. I hold the key to the plot. They do not trust each other enough to move against me. I am Skol Abdhur! Men are puppets to dance on my strings. And women”—a vagrant and curious glint stole into his eyes—“women are food for the gods,” he said strangely.
-- The Blood of BelshazzarNow check this out. Click in at 0:22. Is there some common source? Great clip. Great performance from Yul. I think it may be from good ol' Shakespeare (ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA , Act 5, Scene 2). Thank Tengri and Crom for google, or I'd never have found this one I have to be honest, not read that much Shakespeare, I tried a long time ago, when I was a kid, but it didn't work out for me. Anyway, here's a possible source:
COUNTRYMAN Very good. Give it nothing, I pray you, for it is not worth the feeding.
CLEOPATRA Will it eat me?
COUNTRYMAN You must not think I am so simple but I know the devil himself will not eat a woman. I know that a woman is a dish for the gods, if the devil dress her not. But, truly, these same whoreson devils do the gods great harm in their women, for in every ten that they make, the devils mar five.I think you may be right. Occam's Razor would cut that way. I knew it sounded familiar. My google fu was weak compared to yours. As far as you and Shakespeare... Well, none of us are perfect. You might try to ease back in watching a good film adaptation. Branagh's Henry V or the newest MacBeth are two I recommend. Shakespeare was one of REH's favorite writers and the Bard's influence was a bit more pervasive than many realize. The Hour of the Dragon contains at least a couple of elements drawn from Henry V. What REH had to say about ol' Bill: web.archive.org/web/20050829021600/http://rehupa.com:80/bookshelf_s.htm
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Post by deuce on May 3, 2017 0:20:33 GMT -5
Part of Fred Blosser's intro to Wildside's Gates of Empire... The next two stories in this volume revolve around another hard-bitten knight, the half-Irish Cormac FitzGeoffrey. In “Hawks of Outremer,” as in “Red Blades of Black Cathay,” Howard sets his protagonist on a collision course with an actual historical character, in this case the Islamic hero Saladin who commanded the Moslem armies in the Third Crusade. Howard’s portrayal of Saladin perhaps reflects the influence of Sir Walter Scott’s The Talisman, and whereas in “Red Blades” the treachery and double-dealing of the European Crusaders are alluded to, in this story they are vividly dramatized. In “Blood of Belshazzar,” Howard drops Cormac into a bandit stronghold where outlaws scheme against each other for a fabulous jewel. This was a favorite plot device of Howard’s; outnumbered and surrounded by enemies, his hero must survive and prevail. Here, the means of survival is somewhat arbitrary, and one senses that Howard was still mastering his craft. Later, in similar straits in “The Black Stranger,” under Howard’s more experienced hand, Conan of Cimmeria would engineer his own victory.
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Post by deuce on Jun 29, 2017 7:52:43 GMT -5
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